Engineering and Mining Journal - Whether the market is copper, gold, nickel, iron ore, lead/zinc, PGM, diamonds or other commodities, E&MJ takes the lead in projecting trends, following development and reporting on the most efficient operating pr
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loss with miners, we tried to understand why it's acceptable to have mobile equip- ment down for any period of time. Many organizations will say, 'that's part of what we do. We blast and equipment gets torn up because we are dealing with heavy stuff,'" he said. Wesner refuses to accept that explanation. To improve under the LCE system, miners have to understand and identify losses. They have to participate in a prob- lem-solving exercise to determine a root cause. After that, it's a matter of finding the tools, setting priorities and develop- ing an action plan. "We have combined Lean thinking with risk-based asset man- agement," Wesner said. "Lean is all about eliminating waste throughout a process. So we create a value stream map that starts outside the mine at the mill and then works its way back to the development heading." Thinking beyond a process flowchart, the value stream map plots the major mining processes and then incorporates the communications and various hand- offs, along with inventory, feeding depart- ments, etc. "We try to identify the con- straints on the value stream," Wesner said. "It could be poor performing assets. It could also be softer elements, such as shaft scheduling to get the right materi- als to the right place at the right time. Instead of coordinating how the shaft operates on a 24-hour basis, some organ- izations look at the shaft as a system that is there for anyone to use anytime. We try to put structure to these processes to bet- ter support the business." As the company's name implies, they tend to concentrate on the life of an JUNE 2014 • E&MJ; 95 www.e-mj.com PERFORMANCE OPITMIZATION EMJ_pg92-101_EMJ_pg92-101 6/3/14 3:17 PM Page 95